LaCie 250 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive (300728U)

Get these when they're on sale, which is fairly often. LaCie is a packager: they take drives from Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor (which is part of Seagate now) and other major manufacturers and put them into their neatly designed Porsche housings. Contrary to the some of the reviews here, LaCie doesn't use cheap or sub-standard drives. But drives are electro-mechanical devices and they do fail. Statistically the overall number of failures is low, but that isn't any consolation when it's your drive that fails and takes your data with it. Media failure is a fact of life. Trusting your backups to a single medium is an invitation to disaster. On the other hand, particularly when you get these LaCie drives at the lowest price, using two or three in rotation for backing up your data is economical and safe. The housings are practically as small as the 3.5" drive itself. Heat-dissipation is excellent and there is no need for a fan. The power block is relatively small. The only thing you might not like is the very short USB cable provided by LaCie, but that's easily remedied: get a longer one. Overall, these LaCie 250GB drives are excellent values. Follow what data professionals do and use more than one drive for backing up your data and you'll be well satisifed with these units. Incidentally, these units are also very handy for transporting data from one location to another.Jerry

This hard-drive is sleek, clean and works hard (gives little quiet noises to let you know sometimes).It holds a proper amount of extra storage for video, images, games, files + more. I have a laptop and just use this for all my large files and it's been almost 2 years and is still not full! I edit Slideshow Videos, I am a Professional Photographer and an Artist who needs a reliable hard-drive to hold all my sensitive large files. This does the job.The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because sometimes when I go to eject my hard-drive safely from my laptop, it says it's busy. I've heard that this is normal and happens from time to time- but you never know. I haven't lost anything, and I don't think I would. But hopefully it's not just me that this happens to. It also heats up after just an hour and a half. Not like burning hot, but warm to the touch. I've had it on all day and it doesn't heat more than the temperature it was at 1.5 hours.Good machine for the storage you need. I'd buy another one (when I need one). :)

I've been running 2 of these drives (250MB) for about 2 years, and a 3rd one (160MB) for over 4 years. With no problems. I leave one of the 250MB drives on all the time, as my primary file storage drive - used for file sharing on the home network, including the TiVo HD. It works great. The other 2 drives are left off most of the time, but I turn them on about once a week to make backups. I'm running Windows XP, and there was no configuration or installation required. These are solid machines; reliable, fast, and inexpensive.The only drawback is the high-pitched hum. It's not as loud as the PC fan, but it is noticable if you are listening to music in the same room and have sensitive ears.

This hard drive certainly did not work for me. I've been using large external hard drives for many years for back-ups and have never had trouble copying files to them. Not only was this drive refusing files (character length) but when I decided to use the (confusing) software that came with it, after a lengthy back-up, the drive refused to even mount. If the problem is because I'm Mac-based not PC (that happens a lot!) then I'd like the manufacturer to say 'this product does not perform well with such-and-such operating system...'

Very disappointed in the Lacie Hard Drive. I bought a 250 gb hard drive four years ago. Just after the 3 years were up it went belly-up. Started hemorrhaging files until it lost almost everything. I got it fully reformatted and it lasted another 3 months at most.Unfortunately, another friend of mine bought a Lacie Hard Drive also, and had exactly the same problem as me. 2 for 2 Lacie.Up until the 3 years it lasted fine, but make sure it's not your only source of file storage or you'll be very disappointed.

I just received the pacake from Amazon. Coonected it to my laptop and the drive shows 232GB. I know there will be space used for the Hard drive software.. but 18GB ? Even windows installation is not that much...Lacie does not seem very loud. Looks OK.. The USB cable is short.One advantage is that it takes 110-220V. good for travellers.

I now have a fleet of Lacie USB external hard drives :-) I started with the 160GB, then the 250, a 500 and also have a USB powered 80GB (pocket version). I must say that I am extremely pleased with all of them. I am medium user and primarily use the drive for backup archival of my data / photos. The drive has been working perfectly for many months now and I have not found any bad sectors or experienced any data loss to date. A great product and does exactly what it is supposed to!

this has been a great external hard drive for me. its sleek and modern design takes little space and looks great. as far as it's performance goes, i'd say it's performed perfectly. I am a professional photographer and I trust all my back up on this hard drive ( I also burn DVD's of jobs just in case). But whenever I access files, this hard drive performs fast and with reliability. I think my next will be the porsche design with 500 gigs since these prices have dropped so much.